


There is no reason, and the truth is plain to see

by saavik13



Series: Lapses [6]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Bonding, Family, M/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 05:24:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13381077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saavik13/pseuds/saavik13
Summary: Bones has to face the truth of what Spock's leaving has meant to him and the bonds that were stretched start to finally heal.





	1. Chapter 1

Somehow after spending two years on a planet of desserts and boiling sun, Spock had managed to get paler.  That was the first thing McCoy noticed when Spock’s transport caught up to the Enterprise.  The second was that their bond, while clearly still there, was muted. As soon as he’d caught site of the Vulcan he’d felt it twitch, in the back of his mind, but nothing more. 

And that really pissed him off.

In fact, now that the Earth wasn’t in danger, and the probe thing was handled, McCoy was willing to let himself fully embrace every ounce of his repressed anger.

 How dare that pointed eared hobgoblin do that to him? How dare he come back, after all that time, act like nothing happened, like he didn’t just abandon someone important to go off and meditate in the goddamn desert, and then almost get himself killed! 

It had been two years, TWO YEARS.  At first, he’d tried to be supportive, understanding more than anyone else why Spock thought the entire thing necessary.  He’d read up on this _kolinahr_ , done what he could to let Spock have the space he’d needed.  After the Yonada was taken care of, he’d drifted around for a while until finally he’d accepted an offer from Salok to do a turn of lectures at the VSA.  Which turned into six months of living in Spock’s family’s house, having dinner with Spock’s parents, playing pool with Spock’s mother (because apparently Amanda was a closet pool shark) and then there had been Christmas on Vulcan, with Joanna and Jason both coming to visit along with Amanda’s cousin Adam, two of his kids, and a gaggle of grandchildren.  It was like having a family again, in some weird twisted way, only the person that made him part of that family wasn’t there.  He was out in the desert trying to forget he had one.

Eventually the lecture series ended, and the pain of being in Spock’s home without the Vulcan was too much.  He’d drifted again, to the Academy for a couple months, and then back to Georgia.  He got a post at the medical school he’d gone to so long ago, set up a small little practice.  Sold the practice a few months later, quit his job, and was just starting to try and drink himself into oblivion after another holiday spent in the heat of Vulcan with two people who weren’t sure what they all were to each other but knew they were something, when Kirk had reactivated his commission and he’d been hauled off on this blasted mission.

Now Spock was back, the mantle of Vulcan dispassion firmly pulled up over his eyes, over the wisps of the bond that McCoy as a non-telepath couldn’t even properly feel, and where did that leave them? 

“What do you want?” McCoy finally managed, turning his back on the stiff form of his… he wasn’t sure what to call Spock anymore.

“I am sorry.” Spock replied, gliding into the room far enough the automatic door could close.  “I told you when I left it would be several years at least.”

He had, damn him.  It wasn’t like Spock had ever lied to him.  Still, there was this angry biting feeling clawing at the back of his throat and all McCoy could do was choke back words.  He poured himself a drink instead.

“I did not find what I needed on Vulcan, but I did discover the source of many of my concerns regarding our bond.” Spock glided closer slightly and McCoy could see him in the glass mirror over the makeshift bar in his quarters.  There was a hint of something, glinting in the Vulcan’s dark eyes.  “I did not understand what you told me, when you were recovering and we discussed the bond and your first marriage.  I was listening to your words without knowing the actual meaning.  You made assumptions then, that I did not comprehend you were making.”

“Thought about that a lot, have you?” he bit out, knocking back a large swig of the ship’s rather cheap bourbon. 

“I have thought of many things in the two years we have been separated, but that conversation has been one I have spent considerable time on.” Spock admitted.  “If you would stop drinking long enough,” a hand plucked the glass away before he could take another drink, “we should repeat it.”

“Damn it, Spock!” McCoy bellowed, turning around and unable this time to keep the tears from brimming in his eyes.  “I don’t want to rehash that blasted conversation!  I relive that conversation, all our conversations, every time I try and get even a moment’s sleep!  I’ve spent the last two years doing nothing else you damn…”  He was interrupted by the strong arms of his friend coming up to pull him into the broad chest.  The deceptively soft material of the Vulcan robe smelled like the detergent Amanda used and McCoy broke down even further.

The bond between them was suddenly _there_ , and McCoy could feel Spock properly for the first time in so long he nearly leapt towards him, sure he was mentally strangling his t’hyla.  But Spock took the assault without comment, only opening the bond wider and wider, and pulling him closer still.  Eventually McCoy managed to get himself back together enough he could pull away to look into the dark eyes of the man holding him upright.

Spock gazed back, calmer than McCoy had probably ever seen him, but also with a tenderness he had only started to get used to seeing when they’d separated at the end of the first mission.  “You asked me what I wanted that day, Leonard.  At the time, I did not have a proper answer for you. I had not considered it, or more accurately I had not allowed myself to consider what it was that I desired- from you or from myself.” Spock stated softly.  “The time apart gave me no further excuses to avoid addressing this question and I spent an abnormally long time meditating on it before I concluded that what I wanted, what I needed, I had just run away from.  I am a fool, Leonard, as you often tried to tell me, a fool that was willfully blind to his own mind.  In my quest to be Vulcan I had done just what I had always attempted to avoid and suppressed rather than confronted my emotional reactions, in particular my reaction to you.” Spock took a deep breath, his dark eyes never wavering.  “I forgot that to be Vulcan does not require that I forsake all connection.  My fear of losing you was so great I could not bring myself to risk having you any closer than you had already become.”

McCoy knew he was shaking.  “So what is it you want, then, if you’ve figured it out finally?”

Spock’s mouth quirked ever so slightly.  “I want us to stop pretending that there is not more between us than brotherhood.  I find that I miss you constantly when we are parted, that I find it is the memory of your touch I conjure in my darkest moments.  It was your voice I sought in the darkness.  Can you not say the same?”

“I don’t want to ask anything of you that you can’t give.” McCoy whispered.  “I won’t be a burden to you, Spock.”

That soft half smile he’d missed so much blossomed on the Vulcan’s mouth.  “Leonard, you could ask anything of me and I would attempt to give it to you, illogical though it might be.  I believe it time we stop trying to protect each other from ourselves.”  Spock brought a hand up to gently trace the doctor’s temple.  “We are t’yhla.  Brothers, yes.  But lovers as well even if we have not acted upon the impulse.  We have, the both of us, sought to keep these dual meanings from affecting the other, while it has slowly escaped our notice that we are already everything to to one another.  I cannot ignore that which is between us anymore than I can ignore gravity.  While I may not have achieved _Kolinahr,_ I did find the answer to that which hung over us.”

_Pon farr._ The words hung unsaid but McCoy knew his heart rate increased at just the thought. “You found a way around it?”

“Through it.” Spock corrected, his dark eyes bright with triumph.  “It is painful and difficult but I managed the process not long before I felt the pull to return here.  If it is a life together that you wish, that necessity need no longer hang over that choice.”  Spock paused, some of the confidence leaving his expression.  “At least, I thought that was a concern for you.  It is unpredictable and even though I have no wish to bond with a female, I have fixated once in your presence.  I would not ask you to endure such a thing again if our relationship was to take on new dimensions.  And while I have never known a male/male bonded pair to have gone through the fires together, there is historical evidence for it once being common.  I suspect, however, it would be considerably more difficult on a human than a Vulcan, anatomically if not emotionally.  That concern has now been mitigated.” 

The implications of that were heavy, too heavy, and McCoy felt his knees buckle.  Spock guided him to a chair and kneeled beside it so they were eye level.  “Spock,” McCoy trailed off, his hand reaching for the other man’s cheek. Spock leaned into the touch, his eyes open, the fear and shame that had plagued him the last year or so of their time together on the Enterprise conspicuously absent. McCoy swallowed thickly, unsure what to say in the face of it.  He’d wanted this so badly, for so long, and consigned himself to the impossibility of it.

Spock’s hand shook slightly as he raised it to brush two paired fingers lightly over McCoy’s temple. The bond swelled enough the doctor could feel it, bright and pulsing between them, even with that brief contact.  “I have also addressed the broken bonds that were affecting me.”  Spock’s voice was deep, but steady.  “Zarabeth’s, and the tattered familiar bonds that have plagued me since childhood had combined to affect me to a degree that was,” Spock paused, searching for a word, his fingers still lightly touching McCoy’s face.  “I was compromised.” Spock finally settled on. “To an extent that was shocking to the healers who attended me prior to my going to the monastery.  Salok went so far as to call the affect crippling.” Spock dropped his hand but rested his forehead against the doctor’s.  “I do not believe Salok expected me to survive.  He accused me of leaving you and Jim so you would not have to see my slow decline into madness.  In a way, I believe he was correct, although at the time I considered his words illogical.  I believe, on a subconscious level, I knew how precarious my situation had become.  And like you, with the Yonada, I could not bear the thought of putting you through my growing pain.  My first two months at the monastery were spent in near constant contact with a mind healer.”

“Spock, oh God. If you’d _said_ something….” McCoy shuddered. “I’d have stayed with you, done anything….”

“There was nothing you could do.”  Spock admitted softly.  “Broken bonds are like bleeding wounds, Leonard.  Some of which had been unknowingly neglected since I was an infant.  I do not believe the healers or my father understood the depth of damage that was done when father weakened my bond to mother.  When I severed my bond with my father in anger, there had been some concern but everyone thought that with time it would heal.  Neither had, nor had anyone realized what losing Sybok had done to me.”

“Sybok?”

Spock shook his head.  “That is a story for another day, Leonard.  Suffice it to say familiar bonds are apparently much stronger for me than is typical in a Vulcan, Salok believes this is to do with my human half.  Whatever the cause, I experienced far more of them being broken or damaged at an age unheard of for a Vulcan child.  My mastery of the Disciplines seemed unaffected, so no one thought to investigate further.  One of the downsides to having a society which values privacy so intensely is that they often do not pry- even when they should.”  Spock’s mouth quirked slightly. “I have no doubt that were you present I’d have been found out in seconds.  I distinctly recall mother expressing concern and worry, but being told she was irrational by more than one healer.”

“Do not ever doubt your mother.” McCoy grumbled, holding tightly to Spock as if he could somehow heal the hurt just by clutching him.  “So you’ve, what, gotten some therapy?”

Spock’s expression darkened. “I have forced myself to mediate on the broken ends of the bonds.  Mental scar tissue, if you will, has finally formed to close the wounds.  The mind healers at the monastery helped me to see that I had intentionally kept them open, unwilling to accept that they could not be reformed.  In the case of my bond with my mother, there is a small chance it can be partially restored, strengthened to something noninvasive but still present.  After we arrive at Earth I have asked for a short leave to see her before we return to active duty.  Father is… more complicated.” Spock’s eyes twinkled slightly at that.  “Zarabeth’s loss was only the last in a long line, Leonard.  The mating bond we shared was not deep, or I would not have left with you.  But it was too much for me to weather in my compromised state.”

“Bullshit. I could feel you, you know. You loved her.”

Spock took a deep breath.  “Yes.  But not as I love you.”

Bones didn’t really have a reply for that.  He was so tired, so played out and weary he could only nod like a fool.  Spock was still touching him, so he likely felt enough to know how very much the sentiment was reciprocated, or at least Bones hoped so.  Vulcans may be the ones to master their emotions, but human males had the whole not-talking-about-emotions thing down pretty pat.  The Greeks called what he was feeling catharsis, and McCoy couldn’t help but think his utter emotional exhaustion had to be as big of a trauma to Spock as a broken bond.  Finally, with mouth dry and chest hurting he managed to croak out a simple “good.”

Spock seemed to find this satisfactory if the lightening of his eyes was anything to go by. He stood suddenly, the black of his robes swirling around him, and surveyed the room. None of its contents were personal.  Jim’s call to arms had come in the middle of the night and Amanda had tossed together a few essentials into a travel bag that McCoy hadn’t even had a chance to unpack yet.  Everything else he owned was either in boxes at his house in Georgia or scattered over his room on Vulcan – a room he suddenly realized Spock didn’t even know about.  They must have left Vulcan within hours of one another.  He couldn’t help but chuckle, waving off Spock’s inquisitive raising of an eyebrow. 

“You are overly tired.” Spock proclaimed with conviction, pulling the doctor up and maneuvering him towards the bed in the corner.  “Rest. We can discuss the rest in the morning.”

Bones managed to nod but when Spock started to pull off his boots for him he made a disgruntled sound and shoved him away. “I’m tired, Spock, damn it. I’m not an invalid.”  It took him a moment to remember the configuration of the fastenings on the new uniforms, irritation at Fleet’s new design coloring his expression for a long moment before he managed to shuck his way out. At least he got a choice instead of the unitary piece of shit the crewman got stuck with.

Spock was puttering around, finding a glass of water for the nightstand and generally seeming to be as confused by the new layout of the cabin as the doctor. It was too big for comfort and too sterile. The white and the grey and the beige grated on his senses.  He missed the red of the old blankets, the hard-grey plastic and glinting gold of the accessories.  He also missed the oranges and yellows that dominated the family wing of the house on Vulcan, and the way Amanda had rigged the back three rooms to human standard temperature and water showers while keeping everything totally authentic in its alieness.  In the two years Spock had been gone it had been his only comfort, returning to that house, walking halls he knew Spock had walked.  There was a part of him, now that they had started down the road they never wanted to discuss, that hoped he’ll spend every holiday there now – that someday, when it comes to it, he’ll die there.  It was a morbid thought, growing old and dying in Spock’s house.  Even if their ages weren’t so different the life expectancy for a human was half that of even an unlucky Vulcan. Being with Spock, having Spock accept him as he had, meant Spock will watch him die – assuming the job doesn’t kill them both first. 

He took the time to wonder, just for a moment, if Amanda packed pajamas for him but decided with a shrug that his underwear was just fine for sleeping.  It’s not like Spock hadn’t seen it all before, in decom showers and away missions and a medical emergency or two.  They were both too tired for anything to actually happen and when Spock dropped the water glass off he actually turned to leave.

“Wait.” McCoy managed, rolling over to look at him from the bed.  “You need rest as much as I do.  Get your scrawny Vulcan ass into this bed.”

Spock raised a single eyebrow but without any argument he bent to undue his own shoes before crawling into the bed with his robes still on.  When McCoy made a meaningful gesture Spock’s check flushed slightly. “If you wish me to sleep, Leonard, then I require additional layers.  Your quarters are not ideal for Vulcan systems and I have not been acclimated to human standard for some time.”

“Well say something sooner next time, you masochist.” McCoy reached up to the control panel above the bed and toggled the temperature in the cabin up ten degrees.  He kicked the covers over to double up on the other man before settling onto his side.  He wouldn’t call it cuddling, but the bond grew slightly with the contact even through layers of blankets and cloth and he felt like he needed that like he needed air.

He was almost asleep when Spock’s voice, timid in a way that was not familiar, asked “Leonard, why does your underwear smell like my mother?”

“She likes to do my laundry.” Bones muttered, half asleep.  “Makes Mandy happy so I let her.”

Spock’s body tensed slightly and the bond flared brighter, driving some of the sleep away and causing McCoy to open his eyes. “You’ve been at my family home?”

McCoy reached out to turn Spock’s face so their eyes met.  “Every chance I could get.  It’s a lot closer to that monastery than Georgia.”

Spock’s entire face changed, guilt and shock flickering over his features.  “I do not know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.  But call your mother.” McCoy admonished, resting his head back on the other man’s chest.  “Now shut up. I need sleep.”

“Yes, t’hyla.” Spock agreed, a small smile lifting one corner of his mouth.  “You call my mother, Mandy?”

McCoy can’t help but chuckle into his chest.  “Just you wait till we get you and Jim at the Euchre table, Spock.  It’s been two years and we’ve got a killer alliance happening.”

“I must confess that this engenders a feeling of illogical fear.”


	2. Chapter 2

Waking up in bed with Spock was an entirely new experience. The only time he could remember doing so before had been during the Comforting, so long ago. Spock had watched his bedside at time or two, and he’d sat a ridiculous number of visuals next to Spock – watching the blinking lights of the sickbay scanners with fanatical attention if he was honest – but just waking up next to him, in the same bed, without some calamitous near life threating situation happening was unique.

Spock was cocooned in his robes and all the blankets, wrapped tightly like a Vulcan burrito. One slim hand was stuck out from the pile, resting on McCoy’s, as if even in sleep Spock wanted to remain in contact. The psychologist in the doctor had spent the hours of the sleep processing the confessions Spock had made the evening before. Separation anxiety, the clinician in him diagnosed which caused his heart to pang. This last separation had been Spock’s own fault but given the number that he’d experienced without choice, it was almost logical why he’d chose to break away on his own terms. Spock hadn’t ever had a bond that didn’t end, apparently abruptly. Of course, he’d be scared of what would happen to this one.

With the Vulcan touching him, even lightly, the bond was something McCoy could actively feel. Not for the first time he wished he had more, or any, telepathic ability. It had taken him a while to wheedle out of Amanda the truth of her own bond with Sarek, and her own history. It shouldn’t surprise him that the remarkable woman had secret depths. It also explained a few of Spock’s genetic quirks - things he’d always assumed had come from whatever hanky panky the Vulcans had done to genetically engineer a hybrid fetus that was stable enough to make it. The slightly unstable DNA that he’d always been intrigued by did bare a remarkable resemblance to some of the sample’s he’d snuck off Khan’s crew and in hind sight he should have realized it was mutated human genetic engineering causing it. Amanda’s family had been carrying the remnants of those experiments for generations, mucking about with them in particularly fascinating ways. If it wouldn’t have put her entire family at risk he’d have liked to study it more. But, as far as Amanda was willing to say, the only lasting affect was that she was naturally more adaptive to telepathic contact than the average human, able to form bonds more easily than a normal non-telepath would. And the bonds were stronger, able to transmit nearly the same way they would between two Vulcans, the only major difference being she wasn’t strong enough to sustain multiple bonds at the same time.

If Amanda Grayson had one regret in her life, Bones knew it was that she couldn’t sustain a full parental bond with her son. The shame and hurt in her eyes whenever she even hinted at that old pain was incredibly raw. They’d shared many silent evenings in each other’s company, both reaching out ineffectually trying, hoping, to catch the barest whiff of Spock out there on the mountain. Sarek even seemed to understand. When he wasn’t busy with some Federation emergency he’d often join them, sitting next to his wife and staring off into the darkness of the Vulcan desert as if he too could will his wayward son home. For all the mistakes made during Spock’s youth it was obvious none of them were made out of a lack of love. 

As word had spread through the household of why McCoy was there, it became clear exactly how much importance Vulcan placed in those bonds. Pity and sympathy were not expressions he was used to seeing on Vulcan faces but it was pretty obvious that was what it was he was seeing as random strangers from the household would pause and nod at him or Amanda in the hall. Some of them she greeted by name, but many she just nodded back to as she swept along the ancient stone hallways. Only the elders seemed to think it was their place to speak to them, and he’d often find one of them approaching him in the library or during meals. Vulcans seemed to offer comfort simply by their presence, conversation sticking to safe topics, but they seemed by mutual accord to have agreed to not leave him or Amanda alone. 

Finally he’d gotten one of the men to open up about it. “Bonds, be it between siblings, children, or mates are necessary.” The Elderly man had explained, his old eyes distant. “For a Vulcan it can be painful to have a bond stretched by distance, especially if the parting was not on agreeable terms. Lady Amanda and Sarek have had many challenges in their lives, many bonds stretched and broken, but having Spock so near and yet so far would be like a throbbing wound. Everything in our natures would call out to rectify the parting, to heal the damage to the bonds, to bring him home. This they cannot do. So we grieve with them and with you, honored brother of my house’s son. We offer our peace to bolster you in your hours of distress as you would in ours. It is our way.” The man had turned dark sad eyes on him then. “Lady Amanda has served us well, Leonard son of David. As the light dims for her, and her son has not yet returned to her, we do all we can to ease her days. How much longer we will have the honor of her presence we do not know, but when she is lost so too will Sarek be unless by some great act on her part she finds a way to save him yet again. Her loyalty and her service honor us, and while you cannot take her place in our household, you too share her pain in this. Even if you do not feel the bond as we would, you are affected by its absence. If we lose the Lady, you will have no one here to turn to. So we offer you what we can; your place is with us to wait for our house son to find his way back to us once more no matter the length of time it may take. What peace I have is yours, what comfort I can give please take, what wisdom I have I offer freely. I have never lost a bondmate but I have seen many who have. I do not wish that pain on any soul, and certainly not one who has served this house so well as you.”

Amanda, he soon learned, was not only Sarek’s wife but the matriarch of the household, a position of considerable importance and respect – a position she held in some sort of joint understanding with the matron of another closely aligned house. He’d been finally starting to figure out the dynamics of that when he’d been called off world, but apparently Amanda was good at the organizational half of the job but unable to carry out the necessary duties that needed telepathic contact. She’d leveraged an old house alliance, and apparently her adopted position with the other house (a story he was still trying to get to the bottom of) to arrange for T-Lar to carry out those duties for her. 

The position of matriarch wasn’t hereditary, but it often went to the female of the line with the most seniority. Typically that would have put Spock’s wife into position as heir. Without him having married, and without Amanda having had a daughter, that left the position in flux. It was up to Amanda to name an heir and while many of the women in the household had apparently vied for her attention in that regard, she had yet to do so. At first McCoy had worried that his odd relationship with Spock, that many seemed to think was a substitution for a marriage bond, would make them resentful. But after talking to the elderly man a few more times, and observing everyone, it was clear that wasn’t the case. There seemed to be a general curiosity regarding his position in Spock’s life, a curiosity that Vulcan privacy mores meant no one actually asked about, but it was far from a given that even if Spock had married that Amanda would chose his wife. It took a certain personality to be a matriarch, especially of a clan as important as this one was and as large. There was some sort of emergency plan in place, he’d been assured, if something happened to the matriarch unexpectedly, but no one was going to pressure Amanda into naming an heir, trusting almost disturbingly in her to find the right person at the right time. It was a sort of blind faith he’d never expected to see from a Vulcan, but then, the more he thought about it, it reminded him of the faith Spock had in Jim. The longer he was on the Vulcan the more the Lady Amanda reminded him of their old captain too.

Vulcans, he finally figured out, were drawn to leaders rather than to leadership. Amanda Grayson and Jim Kirk both shared the same kind of personality that just demanded loyalty, commanded it by action and deed. It was easy to see why Spock sometimes seemed torn between his place on the ship and his duty to his home. 

Spock murmured something in his sleep, his strong arms coming up to hold the doctor more tightly. McCoy had to squeeze his eyes shut to stop himself from crying at the feeling, the incredible soul wrenching relief. Spock was finally _home_.


End file.
